


Watch Your Drink

by moonlit_wings



Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cliffhangers, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, I'm not sure if I'd class this as a reader-insert or not but sure let's just go with that, Non-Consensual Drug Use, One Shot, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Reader-Insert, Season/Series 01, application of magical enchantment mistaken for mundane drugging attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 10:32:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18915160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlit_wings/pseuds/moonlit_wings
Summary: Barbara and Walter were not alone outside the café. What if someone noticed him dropping something into her drink when she looked elsewhere?*Does not actually explore the repercussions of Dr Lake and Strickler’s livesnotgetting magically linked.





	Watch Your Drink

**Author's Note:**

> You know that moment when you planned to work on the next chapter of your long-running fic when you get home from work but a new one-shot idea bites you while you’re on the bus and you can’t do any writing on your established project once you’re back home until you’ve written that one-shot fic first?
> 
> Yeah, that’s where this came from.

It’s nothing like the scenarios you’ve prepared for. You’re not in a bar, for one thing. You aren’t even sure if the café has a liquor license. Rather than being late at night, or mid-evening, or in the small hours of the morning, it’s early afternoon. It’s warm and sunny on the outdoor patio.

But the man at the next table _definitely_ just dropped something in the woman’s drink while she was answering her phone.

And like hell are you going to sit there, say nothing, and let her drink it.

You have a few options. If it were a bar, you would pretend to be drunk (or more drunk than you really were), and ‘mistake’ her for a friend of yours, and drag her off to the ladies’ room, to tell her what you saw where he couldn’t hear.

You could still try that, without the ‘acting drunk’ part, but, well, you didn’t eavesdrop on purpose, but she didn’t exactly keep her voice down while venting about her parenting troubles. What you overheard suggests these two know each other pretty well, so you can’t just make up her name.

You could ‘accidentally’ spill your orange juice on her and help her to the bathroom to clean up?

“Well, I do have to go back to work, but I’ve got a few more minutes.” She lifts her cup towards her lips.

No time for strategy. Making a scene it is.

“DON’T DRINK THAT!”

You spring up from your table. She jolts, not enough to drop the cup but enough to spill a little, and puts it down. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses.

“Are you alright, miss?” she asks you.

“I saw him put something in your drink when you were distracted,” you say, gesturing at the man while holding eye contact with the woman. He draws himself up and adjusts the lapels of his suit jacket.

“I put a _sugar cube_ in _mine_ ,” he says.

Okay, he dropped something into both drinks, _but_ –

“He took it out of his pocket.”

The woman’s eyes narrow when you say that. She picks up her spoon and stirs the tea. You expected whatever it was to have dissolved, but she lifts out … some kind of little stone doll.

“… What the _hell_ , Walt.”

He’s glaring at you so fiercely that for an instant you could swear his eyes turn red.

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t actually know where it would go from here. Barbara demanding an explanation here and now and Walter having to improvise something is the most likely scenario, but I have no idea what he would say. Something New Age-y, perhaps?
> 
> If he gets enough identifiable data about the whistle-blower he’ll probably set Angor Rot on her later in revenge.
> 
> This is my first experiment at second-person or ‘reader insert’ fanfiction. I don’t intend to make a habit of it, but in this case it did helpfully cut the necessity of either naming and describing an OC, or having to come up with which canon woman would intervene and why she’d be there.


End file.
